Russia foreign policy analyst Hanna Notte in “We Shall Outlast Them”, tells a story that has long been obscured: that the Kremlin is waging a war not only on Ukraine, but over global order. Blending critical analysis with reportage from over a dozen countries, Notte takes readers on a panoramic journey through this new era of statecraft, with its successes and its failures. From the comedy of Russia’s antics at the UN to the melodrama of the outrageous nuclear threats, Notte renders an astonishing portrait of a newly outwardly-facing Russia. With sensitivity and depth, she shows why the country enjoys enduring appeal among some people around the world while casting a dark shadow onto others.

In 2022, Vladimir Putin commanded Russian forces to invade Ukraine, producing a rapture with the United States and Europe the world has not seen since the Cold war. Russia unleashed immense losses on the Ukrainian people, the war turned into a long battle of wills in which Russia refocused its entire state machinery to achieve one purpose: Outlast the West, at any cost necessary.

Russia has absorbed extra-ordinary battlefield losses and been cut off from much of the western economy without either abandoning the war or becoming the international pariah that many predicted. Russia’s desperate bet is not simply that Ukraine will eventually buckle, but that the coalition sustaining it will fail. The “West” according to Moscow, is neither as cohesive nor as universal as it was just a few years ago: split by the election of Donald Trump and ignored by much of the global south, which continues to do business as usual with Russia. Notte argues Russia’s efforts to outlast the west have reshaped the country’s international relations. Far from retreating into North Korea or Iran-style isolation, the opposite has happened: “Many expected the country to turn into an international pariah following the invasion of Ukraine. But in fact, the war marked the arrival of a newly outward-facing Russia” Notte writes.

Russia’s economy has been severely debilitated, it has been kept afloat by some of the perverse impacts of energy sanctions, which have raised the price of energy in the west and lowered it for India as well as China. “Embracing an unexpected opportunity to buy cheap oil, India had thrown Russia the most critical of economic lifelines” Notte says.

Opec refused US efforts to keep prices low and starve Russia of revenues, while Dubai became the hub of Russia’s shell game of shadow-fleet tankers. “Russian oil money kept flowing, playing a game of Whac-a Mole” Notte explains while western states were struck.

Beijing, in particular, has helped keep Russia in war, through trade and exports of needed technology. The cost in Russia’s dependency: “A deepening vassalage to China was the price Putin was willing to pay for chasing his dream of dominating Ukraine”. Moscow flexed its muscle in Kazakhstan and supported the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party to victory in elections where the example of Ukraine weighed heavily on voters. The election of Trump as US president , which has fractured the west’s resolve amid disputes over tariffs and Greenland. 

We Shall Outlast Them: Putin’s Global Campaign to Defeat the West by Hanna Notte, WW Norton £24, 320 pages.